Why, why, why am I so full of pent-up fury?

Why is the world so endlessly, inventively and shamelessly irritating, virtually every annoying moment of every enraging day?

Why do the vaguest of acquaintances embroil you in pointless conversations about their dull private lives in which they repeatedly refer to people you've never heard of as if you knew them so intimately that you might as well be sleeping with them? Why are those who casually throw in the qualifier 'in my humble opinion' - and, even worse in writing, IMHO - the most opinionated idiots you're ever likely to meet? How unfair is it that you spend years nurturing a carefully constructed loathing for nonsense-haired footballer Robbie Savage only for him to emerge as the only one with the guts to point out that the FA Cup semi-final draw smelt fishier than Billingsgate? Talking of fish, when did it become transformed into a gourmet item worth £25 a pop simply by being served in a big soup-plate with the disgusting skin showing?

Why pan pipes? Why the phrase 'passive-aggressive'? Why Dennis Wise?

Why have you always left the thing you want upstairs? Why do estate agents send me six letters a day telling me that a corporate client wants to rent my flat for six months when both they and I know very well that it is little better than a flophouse? Why might anyone believe that a helpline is experiencing unusually high volumes of customer calls at 3am? Why is there apparently nobody with an Irish accent in the Irish cricket team? Why do TV channels synchronise their ad breaks and jack up the volume to levels only previously experienced by those hearing The Who at Charlton, so that you are trapped in a hellish vortex of car insurance at the very moment you're trying to relax?

Why should buying anything, from a packet of screws to a cup of coffee, require my loyalty? Why, on the one occasion that you have ever decided to take the lift to the upper tier of the stadium, is there a sudden onrush of people, resulting in all those under 80 with full use of their limbs being unmasked as evil, selfish freeloaders? Why am I being asked to leave the pub at a quarter to midnight when they promised, promised, me 24-hour-opening?

Why, when you express the merest hint of dissatisfaction with the way things are turning out, do your nearest and dearest accuse you of being 'a little ball of pent-up fury'? Why, when you try so hard to be good and decent and diligent, does everything not run smoothly, now and for ever? Why is everything so boring? Why am I so horrible?

And another thing. Why does nobody tell you how bloody awful it is to give up smoking?